arXiv subjects

Shaan Nagy

Publications and source records attributed to Shaan Nagy.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

ChopChop: a Programmable Framework for Semantically Constraining the Output of Language Models

Language models (LMs) can generate code but cannot guarantee its correctness$\unicode{x2014}$often producing outputs that violate type safety, program invariants, or other semantic properties. Constrained decoding offers a solution by restricting generation to only produce programs that satisfy user-defined properties. However, existing methods are either limited to syntactic constraints or rely on brittle, ad hoc encodings of semantic properties over token sequences rather than program structure. We present ChopChop, the first programmable framework for constraining the output of LMs with respect to semantic properties. ChopChop introduces a principled way to construct constrained decoders based on analyzing the space of programs a prefix represents. It formulates this analysis as a realizability problem which is solved via coinduction, connecting token-level generation with structural reasoning over programs. We demonstrate ChopChop's generality by using it to enforce (1) equivalence to a reference program and (2) type safety. Across a range of models and tasks, ChopChop improves success rates while maintaining practical decoding latency.

cs.PL↗

arXiv2025

Semantics of Sets of Programs

Applications like program synthesis sometimes require proving that a property holds for all of the infinitely many programs described by a grammar - i.e., an inductively defined set of programs. Current verification frameworks overapproximate programs' behavior when sets of programs contain loops, including two Hoare-style logics that fail to be relatively complete when loops are allowed. In this work, we prove that compositionally verifying simple properties for infinite sets of programs requires tracking distinct program behaviors over unboundedly many executions. Tracking this information is both necessary and sufficient for verification. We prove this fact in a general, reusable theory of denotational semantics that can model the expressivity and compositionality of verification techniques over infinite sets of programs. We construct the minimal compositional semantics that captures simple properties of sets of programs and use it to derive the first sound and relatively complete Hoare-style logic for infinite sets of programs. Thus, our methods can be used to design minimally complex, compositional verification techniques for sets of programs.

cs.PL↗

arXiv2024

Automating Unrealizability Logic: Hoare-Style Proof Synthesis for Infinite Sets of Programs

Automated verification of all members of a (potentially infinite) set of programs has the potential to be useful in program synthesis, as well as in verification of dynamically loaded code, concurrent code, and language properties. Existing techniques for verification of sets of programs are limited in scope and unable to create or use interpretable or reusable information about sets of programs. The consequence is that one cannot learn anything from one verification problem that can be used in another. Unrealizability Logic (UL), proposed by Kim et al. as the first Hoare-style proof system to prove properties over sets of programs (defined by a regular tree grammar), presents a theoretical framework that can express and use reusable insight. In particular, UL features nonterminal summaries -- inductive facts that characterize recursive nonterminals (analogous to procedure summaries in Hoare logic). In this work, we design the first UL proof synthesis algorithm, implemented as Wuldo. Specifically, we decouple the problem of deciding how to apply UL rules from the problem of synthesizing/checking nonterminal summaries by computing proof structure in a fully syntax-directed fashion. We show that Wuldo, when provided nonterminal summaries, can express and prove verification problems beyond the reach of existing tools, including establishing how infinitely many programs behave on infinitely many inputs. In some cases, Wuldo can even synthesize the necessary nonterminal summaries. Moreover, Wuldo can reuse previously proven nonterminal summaries across verification queries, making verification 1.96 times as fast as when summaries are instead proven from scratch.

cs.PL↗